Today we continue our series on the book Own Your Career Own Your Life: Stop Drifting and Take Control of Your Future.
If you’ve missed any articles in this series, there are two ways you can catch up. One is to start with the first post in the series, What It Means to Own Your Career, and click through to subsequent posts. The second is to go to my career category and scroll through to read the posts you missed.
I really like this book — it’s the best career-related book I’ve read in a long time — and despite many people’s tendencies to ignore working on their careers, I urge you to read along and apply what this book says. Doing so could earn you much more than you’d make otherwise and allow you to enjoy your job more.
I’ll be sharing key passages from the book as well as my thoughts on them.
Today we’ll cover several topics and chapters, so let’s get to it…
Build Your Network
I am a big fan of building a great network. It was one of the keys that allowed me to earn average raises of over 8% during my career.
It’s included as one of my seven steps to growing your career and it’s covered in more detail in its own post titled 7 Steps to Millions More: Network.
This book hits networking hard over the next few chapters, starting with this:
One of the best and most powerful things you can do to help prepare for the future of work is to build your network.
Building a network might mean different things to different people, so I’ll start with my definition. Building a strong network means having a significant amount of meaningful connections and relationships in different companies, places, positions, and areas of life. It means adding value and helping others regularly and having people you can call on for help or ideas when you need them. That applies to both your professional and personal life.
I think the best way to build a network is to show up, ask questions, get to know people, add value, help others, and give without expectations. When you come into a new relationship with expectations or asking for things, it is usually a turn off to the people you meet. Instead, focus on getting to know others and finding out how you can help them before asking for anything.
They say you should always try to “dig a well before you’re thirsty,” which means that you build the network before you need it. Many people procrastinate on this and don’t spend any time building their network, and then one day, they get laid off, and the first time they reach out to people is to ask for a favor or a job. You don’t want to be in a desperate situation. You probably already know that when you start by doing nice things for others, they are more likely to reciprocate and help you down the line.
Lots to comment on here:
- “Significant amount of meaningful connections and relationships in different companies, places, positions, and areas of life.” All of these are important as I’ll cover in the next few bullet points..
- “Significant” — Your network can’t be three people and be that productive (in most cases). It needs to be large, broad, and ever-growing. The book tells how to accomplish this later.
- “Meaningful connections” — Not just some guy you ran into once at a convention for 30 seconds. You need to at least have a basic rapport with a person to legitimately consider them a contributor to your network (though hopefully you have more than that with a decent percentage of your network).
- “Different [areas]” — It pays to diversify your network by company, discipline (marketing, finance, etc.), level (entry to senior), geography, and all sorts of parameters — the broader and more eclectic the group is, the better.
- “That applies to both your professional and personal life.” — You need to be networked professionally but also in your life in general. And both of these networks can be helpful with the other (I’ve had professional contacts help me out personally and personal contacts help me professionally.) Some of my best contacts have been personal — helping me find a real estate mentor who helped make me a fortune and a contact who helped get my daughter an internship in D.C.
- In networking as in life, it’s better to give than receive (at least at first). Help others with whatever they need help with and when you need them, they will be there for you (at least good connections will be). This can range from sending a person articles on a topic they are studying (I would forward good posts I saw on a topic — finance, operations, leadership, etc. to contacts all the time — to being willing to be a job reference for them to suggesting a business partner they might find appealing.
- One way I networked was to always try and help recruiters when they called me. Most of the time the jobs they had either weren’t a good fit for me or I wasn’t interested. But for the ones I knew and had a connection with, I always tried to point them in the right direction — to someone I would recommend for the spot. You never know when goodwill like this will come back to help you and why not do it? It helps the recruiter and may help the person you refer (they might find a job they like better).
- I have seen person after person lose a job and THEN begin to “network”. It’s too late then — at least for your network to have significant and quick impact. You need to create a network NOW so it can help you when you need it. That time may be in a year, in a decade, or never, but it’s a form of career insurance to have around if things go sour.
Now many people want an awesome network but they are intimidated by the idea of building one.
The book next moves on to helping these people with thoughts on creating a solid network.
How to be Great at Networking
The book offers several great suggestions for developing a strong network.
Here are two points I found especially helpful:
Curiosity is Key — The first and most important thing is to be curious. One of the best and most common traits of a great leader and great networker is curiosity. That means you desire to get to know people, understand what motivates them, what they are about, and how you can help them. I think being curious and asking questions can alleviate stress for some people who consider themselves introverted, shy, or socially awkward because they don’t have to be entertaining or wow people with great stories. The main thing you need to do to get to know people and get them to like you in conversations is to be curious and ask them questions.
Seeking to Help and Provide Value — The more you try to help and provide value to others, the more they will try to do the same for you. You can’t and shouldn’t expect anything in return, but in general, that is how life (and karma work) work. It’s how you build a reputation of being someone helpful.
Pretty basic, and yet powerful, stuff.
Simply:
- Find out what others need help with. Ask questions. Simply be interested in people. It’s really “being a human 101” that works here.
- Help them with that. If you can help, of course. But if you can’t, your “help” might be referring someone else in your network who can.
Not so hard, right?
In my experience I’ve found that the tougher the situation you help with, the more the person is willing to help you.
For instance, I’ve introduced people to others who could address an issue they were working on. Not a big deal, but helpful. These contacts then helped me with little things too.
But I’ve also helped people find jobs when they were fired or somehow found themselves unemployed. You would think I was their best friend the way they treated me afterwards!
BTW, this works with subordinates too. I had a fellow who worked for me whose dad was sick. The guy wanted to go be with his dad but he had used all his vacation and had no time off to do so. That meant company policy was that if he wanted to take time off, it would be unpaid, something the employee didn’t want to do (he probably was living paycheck to paycheck even though he made a very good salary).
But since I was the president of the company, I could override company policy and I allowed him to use future vacation time he hadn’t yet earned. When I told him he could do this, he broke down crying in thanks. From that time on, he was one of the best employees I ever had (not that that’s the reason I did it, but it was a nice side benefit simply for helping someone out).
Old and New Networking Habits
The book wraps up this chapter by reviewing old and new networking habits as well as summarizing what we’ve discussed so far.
The highlights:
Old Habits: Avoiding new conversations, staying quiet, or talking too much about yourself.
New Habits: Getting really curious and learning as much as you can about people and seeking to help them first.
Practice: Look for an opportunity to meet someone new and have a conversation (networking event, phone call, etc.) or reach out to a good friend with a phone call and try to notice how much you are talking vs. listening, and see if you can shift the balance to talking about thirty percent of the time.
Building a network is one of the most powerful and important things you can do to ensure a successful career. That’s because people always prefer to hire and do business based on relationships. So, the bigger your network and the more people you know in different areas, the easier it will be to get help down the road when you have important career decisions to make.
You want to build your network before you need it (don’t wait until you get laid off or want to change jobs), and to do it, you need to be proactive (spend time and money if you can) and be curious.
Ask questions and get to know others, so they feel heard. And finally, always seek to help and provide value before asking people for favors or other things. Think about karma and how what you put out into the world often comes back to you. So, if you are a giver, people will give to you. And if you are always taking others, you can’t expect others to give freely to you.
Lots of thoughts from me here:
- If you keep to yourself and don’t engage new people, your network will rot on the vine and die (or maybe not even get started in the first place). It’s that simple.
- Instead you have to meet new people, get to know them, and then help them out. Again, it’s really just about being a good human. It’s not really that difficult or time consuming but it can have powerful benefits.
- It’s very true that people like to do business with those who they know and like. If you can be both known to many and liked by them, you’ll do well. BTW, “doing business with” can literally be in a business or any professional setting like a hospital, university, police station, and so on.
- I wouldn’t agree that a bigger network is always better. I would say that a large and growing network of people you know and like and who know and like you is key. I’d rather have 300 people fitting that description than a thousand I barely know. However the truth is you’ll probably have both types of people in your network — those you know well and those you know more in passing.
- BTW, your network isn’t simply people you know — it’s who they know as well. LinkedIn is very good at telling you who knows who and I can almost get in touch with anyone through a series of network connections.
- Make creating a strong and growing network a goal. Then create tasks you’ll perform (with deadlines) to make this happen. Yes, you need to work on it proactively! We’ll get to some ideas on how to do so in a moment.
- “If you are a giver, people will give to you.” This sums up the essence of networking in a few, short words. Perfect.
How and Where to Build Your Network
Next we move into chapter 10 where the author shares some ideas on where to build your network.
Some suggestions:
Networking groups and professional associations (in-person and online)
Conferences and visual summits
Internally within your company
Online via social media and membership groups
Other miscellaneous social outings
I’ll comment on these in a minute but let’s first finish the topic of “where” completely.
Other ideas:
To help you build the internal network, you can organize a weekly or monthly lunch or virtual coffee for groups of people. Of course, you can also reach out to people directly and ask if you can chat on the phone or Zoom. All of these things are effective for building your network and should be part of a regular habit.
Dedicate a certain amount of time (maybe an hour a day or week) on social media to connect with other professionals in your industry, find mentors, or make friends with those who have common interests.
Attending conference or virtual summits.
Networking groups or memberships (online and offline).
Private Facebook or LinkedIn groups.
Private mastermind groups or group coaching programs.
Using LinkedIn Premium or another premium tool to find the right people.
Several thoughts from me:
- Networking groups are usually a waste of time IMO. I have gone to several and the quality of the people there are probably not suitable for most reading this (those events are often filled with real estate agents and financial planners).
- Professional associations can be useful as long as there’s some sort of effort that brings you together — like a convention. For years I attended annual trade shows and benefited greatly from connecting with people there.
- Classes can be great places to connect with people. For instance, I once took a Seven Habits class and met a couple executives from other companies who I added to my network. We got to know each other over lunches and informal breaks, shared information, and started relationships.
- I used to go to lunch with a different person every week. We’d get out of the office, eat something, and connect a bit. Often there was very little talk about work, but these lunches had a way of connecting us together because now knew each other better. I wouldn’t think having a regular lunch/coffee with just one person would be as productive as spreading the meetings around, but I suppose it could be if it was the right person.
- Social media wasn’t as big when I was working as it is now — at least for networking — so I can’t comment on that. I can say that LinkedIn specifically made networking very easy towards the end of my career. I would suggest everyone reading this create your own account and profile and get busy connecting with others there. That said, your only networking can’t be through LinkedIn. You do still need to meet people in real life — that’s where the best connections can be cemented IMO.
- “Miscellaneous social outings”. All I can say is that you never know when and where you’ll meet someone who is a great connection. Who knew I’d meet my real estate mentor at basketball practices for our kids? I also made some of my best business connections at church. I’ve met people at parties, at my gym, and at all sort of random places that I’ve added to my network. If you get out there and become involved, many great connections will happen automatically.
- Dedicate an hour a day to social media networking? I don’t think so. Who has that amount of time for one thing in one area of career development? No one I know. I would suggest a regular effort at networking as a whole (whether it’s in person, with social media, or whatever). This is a case where a little work on a consistent basis over a long period of time can have dramatic impact (see Atomic Habits and The Slight Edge for details.)
- I do think that private groups like the Millionaire Money Mentors are GREAT networking opportunities. I wish I had something like this when I was just starting out.
The book then notes the following about LinkedIn Premium:
A note about LinkedIn Premium. People often ask if it’s worth it, and as with many things, the answer is, “it depends.” It depends on what you are using it for. If you are in sales or you are actively looking for a job, getting LinkedIn Premium or Sales Navigator (their expensive sales tool) might be worth it if you’re going to use it all the time to search for the right people to connect with and send a lot of messages. I recommend you start with the free version of LinkedIn and if you start to bump up against its limits of searches or messages, then try Premium for a month or two and see if you get value. I’ve been a LinkedIn Premium subscriber for many years.
Personally, I have never used it and didn’t see a need to.
The basic version of LinkedIn is an awesome tool that does pretty much all anyone needs in my experience.
Networking Conclusion
The book wraps up this section with the following thoughts on networking:
Old Habit: Not making time for networking. Putting it off for someday and focusing only on the work in front of you.
New Habit: Investing time and money regularly into networking. Decide how much you can dedicate and start spending or investing money into networking regularly and see how it starts to pay off for your life and career. Note: I can’t tell you exactly which groups to join or events to attend, and there is no money-back guarantee here, so spend wisely.
We already know how important it is to build your network and that it will take both time and money. But you can’t just wish it to be true. You’ve got to take action. You can build your network by going to local networking events, attending conferences, going to lunch or coffee with people inside your organization, or spending more time connecting with people on social media.
If you have not previously been in the habit of investing time or money into networking (or doing any networking at all), you may need to shift your mindset. Is this going to be an important investment? If so, will you dedicate a certain percentage of your budget and a few hours a week or month to building your network?
There are two, new keys I see mentioned here that are worth detailing:
- You should invest both time and money into networking. Not just time, but money too. I often paid for those lunches I talked about. If that’s too much, offer to buy someone coffee. Also, spend money to join groups where the value from the group is a fraction of the cost. Just one connection with the right information, friends, or experience can be worth thousands of dollars to your earnings.
- You must take action. It’s great that we’ve covered the topic, but with no action these suggestions are worthless.
As we wrap up this post, let me ask for your networking stories. What have you done as far as networking and how has it helped your career?
For the next post in this series, see Own Your Career, Your Professional Brand and Getting Career Help.
steveark says
You can’t over emphasize how important networking is. I averaged similar raises over my career and it might have been the single biggest factor. Some relationships I formed playing tennis with higher ups. Another real favorite of mine was to buy drinks at technical courses and conventions for the teachers and the keynote speakers. These people were the world thought leaders in their fields and they became my friends because I displayed a keen interest in their fields of study. Another thing we did was to retain industry experts when they retired from long careers with our competition, to come in and teach a 101 course in their field to our young engineers. As far as I know nobody but us did that and it was invaluable. Politicians too, I made it a practice to meet the up and comers who later became governors and senators. Having their cell numbers can be a huge plus when you are facing regulatory problems. Being friends with the federal judge hearing a fifty million dollar lawsuit for you company never hurts your chances of getting a fair hearing. I handed a million dollar plus check from our foundation to the chancellor of a medical school yesterday to help fund a new program they are starting up in our area. He was already an acquaintance I had worked with and now he’s also a friend, and should someone in my family have a serious health problem I’m pretty sure I can get expedited help with just a call. The program is going to really improve health care here in the long term and the networking that resulted was just coincidental. But one of the reasons I do so much volunteer work is the network opportunities it provides. Even in retirement, maybe especially in retirement, networking is still a valuable skill. It is just human nature to respond to help your friends, and you can never have too many friends.
Tom Murin says
Excellent post. Working to build a network should for the most part be something that happens naturally. So many people are out there trying too hard to “network.” There should be some depth to the relationship IMO.
My current position was obtained through a referral from a prior co-worker. Otherwise, I was hired multiple times by people I worked with previously. Being good at what you do and having a decent personality are keys to building a good professional network.
Ace says
Couldn’t agree more. I never considered myself a networker per se, but looking back I see many examples where friends helped friends (see the ESI post about being likable). For instance …
I always enjoyed my work and was happy to help the new guy when his lead was too busy or provide the safe place to ask the dumb question. After years of that, I have seen how many early- to mid-career engineers think which helped me determine who I wanted when I had the opportunity to build my own team.
When my company lost a major contract I was working and many engineers were told to just sit tight and management would place them in new assignments, I was worried about getting stuck in a bad/boring/less engaging place. A friend called me up to say “I hear you’re available …” and I ended up in an awesome place.
You can’t force it, but you can’t neglect it either.
Tom Murin says
Funny how people who work hard have so much “luck”!
expatAshley says
I personally hate the term ‘networking’, because it conjures up the impersonal exchange of business cards at “Networking Events” that you don’t actually have much in common with or cant help each other in a meaningful way.
HOWEVER I do find it incredibly important and valuable to ‘build relationships’. This is something I take the time for, carving out quarterly touchpoints with key people I dont get to work with or see regularly otherwise.
One other key point about building relationships is that you cant expect people do things for you if they aren’t getting anything in return. My advice is to build a “Credibility Bank”. You need to make more deposits than withdraws when building relationships with people.